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A Little Hunger Games Movie Love, For Once

As a fandom, there’s a lot of complaining about The Hunger Games. We don’t like actors or hair color or certain lines in the movie. We especially don’t like the people who don’t like the things that we DO like. We’re an uppity crowd, more so than many of us would like to admit. We’ve learned that this is true of EVERY fandom, not just The Hunger Games fandom.

What we sometimes don’t realize is this: We are so freaking lucky to have a successful film adaptation of the series happening right now, even if it can’t please every person under the sun.

Just look at the cover!

Believe it or not, the admins are Victor’s Village also have our OTHER fandom addictions. Perhaps an unhealthy number of them, but we don’t mind one bit! One of mine is Delirium by Lauren Oliver, which has gained a lot of steam over the past couple years but tends to be a love/hate kid of fandom (Lauren doesn’t deal in happy endings or neatly tied bows at the end of her books, ever!) Delirium was set to be made into a television show and then… it wasn’t.

The rights were optioned and the script was written. The actors were cast and the great debate began. The hair naysayers went NUTS because Hana was a brunette instead of a blonde. The pilot was shot and the tide began to turn. Pictures found their way online. Actors openly expressed their excitement for the project. Delirium trended worldwide on Twitter TWICE. Admittedly, we felt a little invincible.

… And then Fox decided to pick up an iRobot rip-off, a House-plays-lawyer drama, a show that sounds suspiciously like Southland, and a Sleepy Hollow remake (to compete against Once Upon a Time, we assume) over Delirium.

Do I sound bitter? I am. I ain’t even gonna hide it. ARRRRRGHHHHHH!

All of our fandom glory came to a screeching halt for a day as we realized nothing may come of the story we love. That doesn’t mean that all hopes have been dashed (Shameless plug for the Don’t Stop the Deliria campaign!), but we’ve become a little jaded and deflated. We know we’re not the only fandom who has suffered when amazing books are sold and placed neatly on the shelves, possibly to never be seen on a screen ever. Lionsgate is currently doing that with John Green’s Looking For Alaska, which is freakingcriminal.

Now, imagine if that was The Hunger Games. Imagine if Lionsgate bought the rights to The Hunger Games and decided NOT to make the movie. At the time, the dystopian genre hadn’t been tested onscreen and teen movies often left a bad taste in peoples’ mouths, so they did take a risk there. What if they gave the movie a much smaller budget and ended up halting production? What if the first movie didn’t impress execs and they decided not to release it?

As a fandom, we may not love every single detail of The Hunger Games movies, but we should feel damn lucky that we have them.

I Need to Incorporate More Charlie Brown Screams,The Girl With The Pearl

Well, it’s Fox. If they had picked it up, they’d probably decide not to air the pilot, put it in terrible time slots, move it around for sports broadcasts, change the order of episodes, and finally cancel it after one season.

Good point, GWTP! I adore fantasy, YA and sci fi books and I’ve learned to be happy with film adaptations that are Pretty Good, even if not perfect. I’d include the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Hunger Games films in that category.

The Never Adapted variation is sad, but need not be forever. I’m hopeful that at the end of my long wait for an Enders Game film version I will get to see a Pretty Good version that brings some of my imaginings to life (that’s sort of my criterion) while keeping pretty true to most of the characters and story themes (note the low bar).

Far worse than Never Adapted or Pretty Good adaptation is the Truly Terrible adaptation. Best example: the two unwatchable Dune adaptations